The reigning MotoGP world champion tweeted his disgust after Cortese made high-speed contact with his Red Bull KTM team-mate, Danny Kent:

“Cortese needs to have more than a slap on the wrist for his riding in this race,” tweeted Stoner. “He's going to cause a huge crash if he doesn't stop it. Kent rode a really nice race and deserved more than he got, maybe he shouldn't be so nice to Cortese next time.”

After a difficult start to his campaign Kent was battling for the race win when he clashed with his team-mate and ultimately could only finish third after a photo finish with Cortese and Luis Salom.

The result marked the first podium of Kent's grand prix career. After winning the MotoGP race Stoner still felt Cortese's riding had been over the limit.

“We saw some riding from [Cortese] in Portugal with Maverick [Vinales] that I thought 'ok, it's happened once...' but to hit Danny that many times in similar positions today," said Stoner.

“There's tough riding and there's hard riding, but you have to give racing room.

“If somebody hits someone else at that speed and they come and hit a wall... Something really bad could have happened to Danny today or anybody else he got tangled up with.

“I think he needs to be spoken to and told to just give a couple more inches, otherwise something needs to be done.”

Cortese later took to Twitter to answer his critics and apologise to Kent.

"I'm a bit confused about some people comments... that's racing maybe it was hard and over the limit.

"But if you wanna win you give everything!! Don't forget the old days of racing... in that time it was normal..;)

"Im really sorry to @DannyKent52 what happend in the race. I really didn't want to hit him... For all we are still good friends..:)"

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